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The support meta of PGL Arlington Major

At PGL Arlington Major, the participants were obsessed with half a dozen support heroes and they picked them as... Radu M. | 13. August 2022

At PGL Arlington Major, the participants were obsessed with half a dozen support heroes and they picked them as often as they could. It was as though the dozens of other supports didn’t exist at all. That’s how rigid the current meta is.

The teams play with certain goals and timings in mind. And because of that, the hero pool gets boiled down to those choices that let you do what you want to do with ease. In the past, people used to pick a wide variety of supports, from Lion to Lina. But these days, a few of them will do everything that’s needed in a reliable way.

Most picked supports

The most picked support heroes of the Arlington Major have been Dazzle, Winter Wyvern, Marci, Snapfire, Chen, Zeus, and Tusk.

Everyone opted for survivability, damage, or initiation. Some teams really enjoyed the ability to send in a support that can sacrifice himself to trade his life for a key target such as the enemy mid or carry. Other teams preferred to keep their support hero in the back and save their cores when needed.

In the case of some teams, such as Entity, a support hero like Winter Wyvern proved capable of winning matches almost on its own. The combination of Arctic Burn, saves, and ultimates was impossible to deal with, as long as the player was exceptionally good at playing the hero.

Most successful supports

The most successful support heroes of PGL Arlington Major have been Chen, Earth Spirit, Jakiro, Enigma, and Elder Titan.

In the case of Chen, his win rate was 75% and he got picked in 40 games. We have seen a lot of Chen games at PGL Arlington Major and that’s a sign that the meta heavily favors a fast-paced strategy that focuses on winning the lanes and then dominating the mid-game.

In the current Dota 2 meta, the notion of late-game is almost non-existent.

winter wyvern

Valve Corporation

Most banned supports

On the list of highly banned support heroes we have Winter Wyvern, Enigma, Dazzle, Marci, Zeus, and Chen. Basically, the heroes who proved to be very strong ended up getting banned a lot because everyone wanted them. Or, if a team didn’t have strategies that could incorporate those heroes, it banned it in the first phase.

One major problem for a lot of teams was that, despite the high number of available bans for each match, some annoyingly strong support heroes always remained untouched. And they usually made a big difference.

Header: Valve Corporation